desert prototypes

desert prototypes

We looked at animals that are successful in the desert environment to see if they could teach us something about architecture.  These four have become reference points for us, suggesting strategies or starting a train of thought that helps us think through projects:

1. Tortoise

That big, beautiful shell is a terrific mediator between harsh exterior circumstances and the delicate animal within, and that vaulted space would be amazing magnified 100x.  We think of Arcosanti as a tortoise: huge concrete vaults poured on carefully sculpted hills of sand, and then dug out to create beautiful spaces.  It also inspired a house we designed for a friend in Algeria, dug into a berm, covered with dirt, parts emerging from under the shell and stabilizing the shifting sands.

2. Snake

There aren't a lot of programs suited to strictly linear configurations, but the repetitive structure, the possibility of modulating the height and width, and the idea of a building that coils and flows are intriguing.  What interests us most, however, is hanging on to the shed skin: a second skin.  The temperature difference between shaded and unshaded surfaces can get as high as 50 degrees Fahrenheit or more, reinforcing what we already know: it's more comfortable in the shade, at least when the ambient temperature gets above 80 or so here in the dry desert.  Imagine a building with a second skin shading it in the summer only, shedding it in the winter when we need the heat even here: this strikes us as a model worth consideration.  

3. Cactus

The Saguaro elegantly combines a pleated exterior that casts a lot of shade on itself, with a woven skeleton of great strength.  The skeleton reminded us of the exterior structure of the twin Trade Center towers that fell on 9/11, and possibly of the Bird's Nest stadium from the Olympics in China, and a bit as well of a building on the High Line in New York City by Neil Denari.  Pleating a building skin is a bit fashionable, but we always wonder if its pure rhetoric and no substance.  Why pleat?  To give strength to a thin material or structure, to add scale to a facade that might otherwise feel abstract and scaleless, and from the saguaro this idea: to cast shadow and keep the sun off yourself.  

4. Ant

Digging down into the cool, dry earth and hiding from the sun, a strategy that served us well on a hike through the Grand Canyon when we ran out of water once (not a proud moment), but not immediately what you would imagine for a building that after all, usually benefits from windows and a view.  Nonetheless, imagining ant excavations as courtyards and lightwells suggested to us a useful line of investigation, especially for programs where daylight and views are less important.  Our design for the Grand Eqyptian Museum, for example, was based on anthills, as is the Museum of the Sahara currently in design.  For the latter, we dig courtyards down as you would to find water, creating outdoor spaces around fountains and pools, gathering galleries around these outdoor spaces and moving gathering spaces and offices up so that they do benefit from the available views.